Myself exposed

(Note: This is also published in the online journal Philippine Literary Folio.)


Fish, which is a staple in our family meals, is not exactly a favorite. But there was one night when I gorged bangus as if it was the first time I tasted fish. I filled my plate with bits of fish, too many that I ended up overstuffing myself, which was why shortly after dinner, I found myself throwing up in the bathroom. My aching belly began to deflate as I expelled the gross liquid. Tears welled up in my eyes as a matter of course, but not out of a harrowing pain that unleashed itself. But although the feeling was nothing close to heaven, there was a sense of relief.

I wish my brain could function the same. That it would react fast. That when I fill it with as much intellectual food as I could, it would naturally open the pathway and release a brain product that is shaped in a particular form but not as gross as my vomit. That my purpose for gorging, which is to inspire myself to write, would see the end of it. Most times, however, I feel an invisible barrier within my literary throat, immobilizing the inspiration, impeding the creation of a product, leaving me only as bloated and as pained as I couldn’t have hoped to imagine. It is gluttony at best.

I call myself a writer. I like the sound of the word, the way it forms an association with me, however self-righteous I might sound. Writer, after all, is a title reserved for the intellectuals, the academic elites, and the bold souls. I know I am not any of those, but I keep my label. I am a writer. The fact that I write for a living makes me one. However, there is a big trapeze of uncertainty that is shrouding me. I call myself a writer, but the atoms of my brain along with the pulsing veins all throughout my body challenge me every night and day, asking if I am truly what I call myself to be. Pretense that’s what I do, they say. Pretending to be someone I am not. Just because I like the sound of it and how it creates an association with me.

Pretense. I’ve known pretense since I was a kid. When I had time alone, playing roles was how I busied myself. I imagined being a pilgrim when I walked home from school, a teacher writing on an invisible blackboard, and a señorita wearing jewelry-shaped rubber bands. In one of my role-playing afternoons, I took the role of an erudite, wearing a disfigured pair of eyeglasses I salvaged from a forgotten box lying around the house. I imagined being interviewed on TV and answering tons of questions one breath at a time. The words coming from my mouth were not exactly words, but a compounding of sounds that was close to the birds’ chirping. I could have uttered real words, but thinking of real words and actually delivering them could take time, defeating my purpose of appearing as a quick-witted erudite. Every now and then, I would push the glasses up my nose, oblivious to the sound I was making, oblivious to the things my decision of not uttering real words represented.

I didn’t know of it then, of course. Only now, when my means of living is largely centered on the words that I use and the way I use them, that I can realize my difficulty of liberally pouring out every bit of thought and emotion I am capable of having. But I wouldn’t actually fully realize this had I not observed how this difficulty is gripping my brain and stunting my growth as a writer. You see, a writer is not a writer without a compelling message. You can write about anything to your heart’s content, but that doesn’t automatically make you a writer. A writer is a reflection of life itself, mirroring a culture, a lifestyle, a belief, a philosophy, and everything else life represents. He bravely brandishes a pen and allows himself to be consumed by the powerful force silently living within him, abandoning himself in the process and fighting every urge to slip back to the world where pretenses are better appreciated. He gives life to a self that has been consistently shadowed by all of life’s seemingly greater concerns, even if these concerns are in truth mundane. A writer is not his usual self. It is his honest, bravest, and sincerest version, one who is not a bit concerned about the thrashing critiques but is convincingly devoted to communicating what needs to be communicated. It is what he ought to be in the real world. For him to be exactly that, a secure and sound connection to his thoughts and emotions is invariably necessary. And this somewhat disqualifies me.

On the few occasions that I write for personal pleasure, which requires me to extricate and word all known and unknown thoughts and emotions, I, more often than not, find an amateurish tone in my compositions. Maybe because I am not used to having this close connection to myself, being exposed to my barest and rawest version. The honesty laced in every word almost always ignites a sense of awkwardness. But I’d like to think it’s more because I am never good at it in the first place. So my usual resolve is to halt all attempts to write. In other words, to not write until I find a compelling reason to write, which by the way rarely happens.

People say that to be a better writer, all you need to do is write. And this requires you to wear your writer hat wherever you are. Up in the mountains, down under the sea, on the ground, and in your sleep. The problem with me is that I always look at my writer hat and then at others’ and wonder why mine is not as good as theirs. When I find the courage to fit my hat around my head, fulfilling what I think are my duties to myself, I’d notice that my hat is lackluster, mediocre, and small, so I’d wear it off again, hoping in vain it would transform into the hat that I truly want. But always I am reminded that transformation is not going to happen if I have it futilely lying around. In fact, it will grow less appealing than before I wore it off. The work of nature, that is. But what will I do with insecurity that is looming into something bigger than my hat?

Though I wish I weren't, I am insecure as a writer. I try to banish all reasons to be insecure, but it has a way of coming back to me, poisoning my blood as fast as the gushing, torrent waterfalls. It creeps, silently, into my being and holds a firm footing that can’t be extinguished by a mere pep talk. A fellow writer, to whom I bravely confided and who was the only person to know of my insecurities, said I was the only insecure writer she knew. She said it in a way that would have you thinking, as if asking, “What is there to be insecure of?”

There are many things actually. I’ve read many good writers during my search for inspirations and sessions of self-studying literature, and I can’t even describe how envious I am of them. If there is only one word I am left with to describe their approach on choosing words, the manner they string every word together to form a sentence, and the way they construct the sentences to communicate a thought, I would gladly use the word brilliant. And so whenever I write, passages of their materials voyage in my mind, prompting me to try to write the way they do and fit myself into their molds. But doing so frustrates me because always I find myself so small for the molds shaped after them. Heaven knows how hard I pray to be like these writers and how hard I work and study to at least be worthy of doing the very same thing that defines them.

I am aware that I am nowhere near the literary gods of the past and the present both in the local and international scenes. And this is partly why I keep questioning the validity of my claim of being a writer. The other part is because I am always plagued by numerous doubts about my writer self. I have had rejections looking me in the eye, experienced times when writing opportunities passed me by, and been thrown in situations where I couldn’t help but compare myself with other writers.

Yet, I am positive that all this would soon end. And how and when to end this hugely depend on me. Maybe it will end when I fully acknowledge that I am unique as a writer in the same way I am unique as a person. And perhaps I don’t even have to fit myself into someone else’s mold, because I am capable of creating my own. I know that when that time comes, I can finally write without fear of self-exposition and without defecting the thoughts even before I put them into paper. The insecurity that so disables me will be shaped into something that can be of use to sharpen my skills. And I can freely write forgetting everything but my love for writing and my hope that it will love me back as much. Being a writer, among other things, is how I want to be defined, and writing is the one thing I am not willing to give up. I will cease dancing, I will cease singing, I will cease walking, but I can never bring myself to the death of my writing. But in case my writer self dies, whether self-induced or out of happenstance, I pray that the God Almighty will breathe life on it again, giving me sharper senses so that I can write about the things I used to pass up and a bigger heart so that I can learn to love my writer self more. I think I deserve a second chance.

The Shepherd and The Sheep

All known languages are proved limited
To describe the joy when it was found
The Shepherd left the ninety-nine
To go after the sheep, the wayward one
It was circling around the open field
Confused and dazed by its enormity
But with the sheep’s name on His lips
The Shepherd sprinted toward the sheep
With total abandon, it perched on His shoulders
And gladly they went home together


The Shepherd is as good as He claims to be
Clearing the way, He goes before the sheep
And if it cannot find the will to cross
With His voice and hands, He ushers it along
His pasture is bountiful, His water is clear
No more hunger, no more thirst, the sheep is free
With the rest of His flock, in His pen, it is safe
Protected from the enemy who couldn’t traipse
It bounces with joy, it the sheep
As the Shepherd looks on, His gaze is wrapped with peace


Many times, though, the sheep loses His track
Decidedly it wants to prove its might
But every time it never fails to prove, too
Its might alone could not put the sheep through
Alone in the field again, the sheep goes scared
Thunders begin to growl and down comes the raging rain
It finds shelter under a tree and then in a cave
But its coat drips wet all the same
In agony, the sheep longs for the pen again
Where warmth from the good Shepherd flows to no end


With a drop amount of strength remaining
The sheep decides to come back to Him
But even before it lifts a foot
There the Shepherd comes into full view
He carries the sheep and nestles it in His arms
As it finds rest that evaded the night
The Shepherd says He was waiting for the sheep
But He knew the sheep needed a lifting
So He left and said, “I will bring it home again”
“No matter how many times away it sends itself.”

Why Do I Love?

Why do I love God?
He fills my barn with blessings. I have his favor.
His promises are beyond my dreams.
His plans have already been laid out before me.
So as if on automatic pilot, my heart beats for him.
But what if there are no more blessings in sight?
I’m afraid of how my heart will respond.
Will I still stick to Him?
Will I still live for Him?
Will I still be in gratitude?
Can I say praises?
How faithful are those who, even in the midst of barrenness and drought,
choose to believe the beauty, mercy, and generosity of God.

Why do I love God?
Is it because I am poor and He is rich?
Is it because He owns the heavens and the earth and all the riches therein?
Is it because I am eternally in need and only He could fulfill?
To reduce God to a bellboy is the most troubling of my fears.
I don’t want a selfish kind of love.
I desire not to center my affections on all the advantages.
I want to love God for who He is, with or without all the heavenly benefits.
Not that He is unable to bless me.
He, in fact is, willing to.
To know what’s in it for me is the natural manifestation of my human tendencies,
but I say enough of me.
It’s about to time to grow in faith and focus on what He voluntarily did for me at the Cross many thousands of years ago.
Which, in every essence, is good enough reason to love Him.

Pure love.
That’s what He deserves.

The end of the story

(Note: This also appears in the new online literary journal, The New Dentists.)

A school program required my mother, an assistant principal in a private college in Manila, to bring a baby picture of herself. She didn’t spend much time deciding which to bring; she only has one. It is studio-shot and kept at the back page of her wedding album, occupying the whole space with an 8x10” size. I don’t say it is in black and white, which is the usual description I use for vintage photographs. It is more of gray and brown, the photo color palette of the ‘60s, which radiates with more poignancy than nostalgia. I have seen it several times as a kid and a few times as an adult, and I can’t remember if I ever questioned why she only has one baby picture and none with her parents.

I know the story of my mother. From the time I was learning to write ABC up to the time I am writing for a living, I have always picked from here and there various tidbits of my mother’s history. Mama is an only child, and the people I call aunt and uncles are in fact her half-siblings. I don’t know how I came to know this or who told me this fragment of truth about the family. This, after all, is not the kind of thing that is easily explained to kids and so is usually left unsaid for the younger family members to discover in the course of time. My family is different, and I grew up taking this story as part of the normalcy of life. As if it happened in every family.

In my thought, I tried a few times alienating my mother from her half-siblings. See her as a different individual from them, some stranger, some outsider. I failed, I have to say, because in the same thought, every reason said my mother was inseparable from them. Although she didn’t share with them the same father, she shared with them the same mother, the same childhood, the same house, and the same domestic turmoil. In the same thought, my mother was tied to them, who was pulled back as fast as she was pulled away.

To some degree, my mother is generous sharing with me and my sister her story. So most of what I know came from her own mouth, and the rest I observed from her relationship with her mother and siblings. There was one thing, however, that she didn’t bluntly tell us, but which I knew of instinctively: She didn’t meet her father. Although my mother knew his name and some familial details, the entirety of his person was unknown to her. I knew of this because I didn’t have a grandfather, which meant I had no old man to call Lolo, a bespectacled, gray-haired, pampering grandfather who, to this day, I wish having. To my mother, this meant a part of her was lost.

Mama’s parents had a short-lived romance. While I wish I knew how exactly it ended, my mother sure had wished it didn’t end. Her father left even before she was born, at a time when she was insulated and oblivious to the rest of the world, and so when my mother said she looked like her father, I didn’t know where she got the idea. The fact that she shared many semblances with my grandmother didn’t support her theory. Maybe she was trying to build linkages to her father, to find him in her, and to personify his existence in her own. And perhaps, she justified parts of her being as something she inherited from her father when she couldn’t find explanations elsewhere.

What does it mean growing without a father? I should know, having to spend most of my childhood years with my father working abroad. But in many ways, I couldn’t and would probably never understand the void in Mama’s heart because she and I were in different boats. I knew my father was somewhere and was coming back; Mama knew her father was somewhere but was not ever coming back. I had glimpses of my father; Mama had none. I knew what a father’s love meant; Mama did not. I was secure; she was not. This made a huge difference. But I never was completely aware of this until recently, when Mama met her aunt, one of the few living siblings of her father and her only link to him.

Mama always wanted to meet her father, but she had long ago given up finding him. The last time she attempted was in the ‘70s, when she stayed with another aunt, hoping that she could lead Mama to her father. She never did, which was logical because Mama’s father already had another family. Mama soon left, but failed to banish the deep-seated longing that hounded her every time she witnessed father-and-daughter reunions. She wanted to have a reunion of her own so much so that after knowing a friend has recently found her absentee father, Mama immediately looked up in the yellow pages and, with boldness natural to her, tried to contact the first person with her father’s surname.

What she found was her father’s cousin, who in turn led Mama to his sister, a woman in her 70s who had memory difficulties and enjoyed talking about the recent past but not the distant past that could probably include Mama’s father. She just told Mama, flatly, that her brother died many years ago. Mama’s half-sister, the youngest of her late father’s three children and whom she phoned by her aunt’s suggestion, said it was in fact in 2003. Depression, her sister said. He died of depression two years after her mother’s demise.

The irony was that in 2003, Mama had lingering thoughts about her father and had strong desires to look for him, but she postponed every plan for fear of being the proverbial illegitimate child destroying a family’s peaceful existence. Mama has always been like that. Self-sacrificial. She’d rather suffer than see people special to her hurting. And, even without personally knowing him, these included her father.

I suppose I expected to see Mama cry when she told us of her father’s death. Or at least close to crying. Mama, after all, easily gets very emotional. This time, however, she never did. She was strong as ever. And after, I think, three nights of talking about it, it never formed part of any of our family’s discussions again. It slipped away. Like a sickeningly poor-plotted movie.

Mama has probably gotten over it quicker than I expected. Had she perhaps foreseen that this was how it would end? That when she was dialing to contact relatives of her father, she had actually felt he was long dead? That after all those years, she had in fact grown hopeless? I don’t know. I could never bring myself to ask her, thinking it was beside the point. But I never could actually believe that she has forgotten him entirely. Because although she is trying to make things appear easy, it could be that Mama still silently longs to see her father, who, she was later told by her mother, looked for her when she was about nine, but knows that it is now entirely impossible, because real-life stories’ endings are always unalterable.

Stubborn but awesome love

I don’t, and probably will never, understand why God loves and pursues me. It is kind of puzzling. I’ve wronged and failed Him over and over. I’ve questioned and doubted Him a lot of times. And each time I thought of the gravity of my sins, I feared God would not think twice to express His wrath and eternally abandon me. But countless times, especially when I was desperate down the pit, He’s proven His interest in me. And like a man rescuing a tattered doll from a manhole, he eagerly pulled me back, rinsed off the dirt and smell from the sordid pit, put the lost pieces together, and embraced me like I was new.

I can’t understand this kind of love, for I am not deserving of it. Why does He take pleasure in loving a mess like me? What is so special about me that He doesn’t want to let me go? I sinned; He forgave. I turned my back on Him; He took my hand again. I went away; He ran towards me to welcome me home. I rebelled; He accepted me still. I had no idea of heaven; He said He wanted me to be there to spend eternity with Him.

God, His persistence, His faithfulness, and the nature of His love are all beyond my understanding. And He will always astound me, for I am not capable of that great love and will never be able to equal it. His is wider than the heavens, deeper than the seas, bigger than me, and enough reason to die for me.

As it seems, my comprehension has human limitations to grasp this kind of love, but I am forever grateful and will respond to it in the way that is pleasing to Him.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

Psalm 103: 8-15

An epiphany at a time of a writer's block

Having an expansive knowledge of the language, in and of itself, cannot define a good writer. Messages should be sent across. Not cheap messages, but messages that rouse, influence, and move people to transformations in thoughts, actions, and perspectives. If a writer is able to penetrate his reader’s mind and challenge the plateauness of a thinking, he goes beyond the threshold of talent. And for him to do that, he has to exhaust his whole being, squeeze out fragments of intellect, risk his vulnerability, and expose his humanity.

Unexpected

Just as the chorale begun the hymn, the church’s wooden doors propped open, revealing the silhouette of the bride. Her whole frame, covered with white cloth, radiated with the afternoon sunshine. She was as beautiful as any bride could be. And her dopey eyes glowed as if to say she was happy. Getting her cue from the hymn, she started to walk down the aisle, getting past the misty-eyed spectators, going to the direction of her blubbering but equally happy groom. She was finally getting married.

She was my cousin. My second-degree cousin, actually. Being one of the older kids in my generation, she was used to being called ate (big sister). The only irony is that she was an only child. But being so seemed to make her attracted to the idea of siblings and turn her into a generous and affable big sister to her cousins. It’s maybe because she was loved immensely and had so much love to give.

Though both her parents were working abroad, her paternal grandparents, with whom she stayed for many years, treated her like she was their own. So growing parentless never became a major issue or a gripping force for rebellion. She was well taken care of, after all, and had fast become the apple of the eye. She went to good schools, was dressed impeccably better than the rest of us, was provided with a wealth of privileges usually not available to ordinary kids, and had the early manifestations of elegance. She was pampered but not spoiled. She was the envy of little girls.

Every time her grandmother brought her to our house, I was glad in the way one would feel when meeting a real-life princess. We were relatively not pauper, but I felt small whenever she was around. She didn’t belong to our world, and neither did we to hers. But while there seemed to be an unseen abyss that separated us, she didn’t in any way illuminate our differences. She would play with us like any child would and talk to us in a calculated, refined manner. Without her realizing it, I was drawn to her by the reality of her existence and she became a paragon of childhood sophistication.

I have no clear recollection of the many afternoons my sister, my other cousin, and I spent with her. But there was one afternoon that stood out from my memory. It was when she, while gently twiddling my hair, commented I looked like the famous local actress of the 80’s. That was one of the few times I felt grandiosely beautiful as a kid. Even if it came from a child, a cousin who had an inclination to biased judgment, I believed it with no reservation. To a kid who was not so used to hearing comments as good as that from outsiders, it was worth much more than bags of candies, dolls, and colored pens. It was more than an innocent comment, for it laid the early foundations of my self-confidence. To this day, even if we’ve both aged and I can’t trace exactly where our similarities begin, I still believe I look like the actress. Not because I’ve grown to like the idea I am beautiful, but because my cousin said so.

When we transferred home, the occasional visits went down to zero. Her grandmother would still phone my mother, but news about my cousin was a rarity. There never was big news about her, in the first place. She lived in silence, in privacy. When we were kids, I remember she would talk only when necessary. Growing up as a teen, she, I believe, permanently tucked into her being a certain sense of aloofness I’d observed from her.

I also grew up to be a silent, private person. I never thought that news about me or us reached her, either. Steadily, we lost our connection. We were slipping away from both our worlds.

The possibility of us meeting again was only during special occasions, which amazingly had a way to patch severed paths together. When we met again, however, we were in our late teens and were soaked in self-consciousness, a strong enough force to stop us from going beyond the cordial hi’s and hello’s. Our eyes would meet and immediately look away as if something invisible in the other direction was more important than reuniting with a cousin. The awkwardness of the act was too much to launch another attempt to establish interest. And even though she was in the same room, her absence was more pronounced.

It is so amusing how time and distance could progressively turn people who got along very well as kids into total strangers as adults. I instinctively took it as a fact, an irrevocable error of past times. When you were kids, you would share even the tiniest bit of dreams, resolved that when it’s time for those dreams to take place, you would still be sticking together like nothing happened in between the years. In between the years, however, things happen not in the way you have foreseen, creating gaps, wide enough to keep you apart. And when one of the dreams finally comes, you are merely a shadow of the past. You are no longer there to share the happiness.

I didn’t know if getting married was part of my cousin’s dreams any more than I knew of her wanting me to be part of her wedding. And so when my mother broke the news I would be in the bridal entourage, I doubted. I asked my mother to repeat the news. I had just come from bed, so I was making sure I was hearing things right. “Who is getting married again?” She did mention the name, and as if to remind me of her existence, she added “Your cousin.”

If it’s another cousin with whom I practically grew up, I wouldn’t have been as surprised. But it was the cousin I lost a chance to intimately know who wanted me to take part in one of the most important events of her life. There had been a huge wall of unfamiliarity between us, and at this point, I was thinking whether it really existed or was only part of my imagination. Regardless, my cousin was choosing to be oblivious to it and seemed to remind me of the good old days, if only for a moment.

There were a few times I would like to think what we would have been had we had the chance to grow up more closely. Maybe we would tell each other stories, we would share secrets, we would be enjoying late-night talks, and we would be like sisters. And I could probably explain better why, for the first time since I attended a wedding, I shed tears when I saw her march toward her groom. Without feeling embarrassed, perhaps I could tell her it’s because I missed her.

Look, it's Armani

He’s an ukay-ukay regular customer. My dad. My mother describes him as addict, but I’d like to veer away from her description to give my dad some respect, although I’m tempted most of the time to use the same word or another that is more lacerating and irreverent than that. He’s obsessed. That I believe is more accurate. And less vindictive.

It didn’t happen progressively. There was no defining moment, a turning point whatsoever. He acted just like that without at least giving us warnings or getting bigger closets to squeeze in all his stuff. I mean, he got so many they could almost displace my mother’s. Sometimes he would bring home a pair of jeans or a shirt. Sometimes a pair of shoes. Other times a belt. We couldn’t tell exactly what and when he would buy next. It all depends on the price and the new arrivals.

And boy, how he turned into an expert. While I can hardly guess how much a dress is, my dad knows definitely. He can even compare prices. Having gone to many stores, he knows that Ukay-Ukay A sells more cheaply than Ukay-Ukay B, but that its fitting room is not in good shape as B’s. There were even times his breaking news was not about the latest political blunders, but the newly opened ukay-ukay store in such and such street, or the on-going sale in such and such store.

“I spotted a pair of jeans, but I would wait for the sale. Its price would have dropped by then,” he would say of the sale, which usually is still a week to go.

“Who said it’s still there by then?” I would be tempted to say, but always decide not to. After all, he has waited for ukay-wide sales several times already and never been disappointed after finding whatever clothing he wanted still hanging invitingly.

My dad is frugal. He’s the type who doesn’t want to spend excessively even if he has the money to spare. He turns off the light when no one’s in the room. If he can tolerate the heat, he’d rather fan himself than turn on the electric fan. He eats leftovers, even those that have been in the freezer for more than three days. He sometimes eats them without reheating, leaving the microwave oven, which he still keeps in the box, completely useless. Shopping at ukay-ukay stores, therefore, is not much of a surprise. After all, they are a place where he could buy stuff usually worth thousands of pesos for a fraction of the amount.

What interests me, though, is not his ability to scour the whole of an ukay-ukay store for a piece worth a high school student’s allowance. My dad has impressively sophisticated taste. Sosyal, if I may say. A pair of jeans should be an Armani, the slacks Louis Vuitton, the shoes Salvatore Ferragamo. And there are other names he digs for, which I can’t remember, let alone spell.

For a good record, 8 out of his 10 purchases are branded. In fact, he buys anything signature, even those that are outdated they look like costumes for movies. I know they are called vintage. And in the fashion world, the word vintage is attached to gloriously glamorous, elegant, and exotic images. But these vintage clothes, some at least, don’t look flattering on my dad. He thinks otherwise, though.

“Are you sure you want to wear that?” I would ask, trying to define what year and season the piece was from. What, 70’s? 80’s?

I know that my dad has taken no special interest in vintage clothing. I know it for a fact. He doesn’t care what decade the piece was from, but he cares about the label on which the fashion god’s name is sewn. And I have come to realize that that’s the major consideration he has when buying a piece from an ukay-ukay store. Who cares if there is an obvious hole on the left leg of the jeans? Who cares if the shirt’s big on him? Who cares if he looks like he’s stuck in the 80’s? Who cares, really?

“Why, this is Armani,” he would say, fronting the mirror with the piece on, then slightly turning around to get a full view of his back. He would repeat probably more than three times it’s Armani or another whose-who name and justify why it was a good buy to, in my opinion, convince himself more than us.

“Look, it’s Armani. It is genuine.”

I get it. To my dad, sporting a signature clothing is sometimes more important than being connected to the rest of the fashion world. And it seems a single name outweighs the purpose of dressing. I would like to take it all from the viewpoint of an understanding daughter, but it kind of bothers me that he seems to overlook why humans dress in the first place. I almost regularly tell my dad no one in the streets would dare ask him who he is wearing and that people wouldn’t mind if it’s not Armani. He wouldn’t budge, and I take that as a hint that he’s not to abandon yet his usual trips to ukay-ukay stores.

Now he regularly receives text alerts from a certain ukay-ukay store. He read to us the message one day, an info-text of an upcoming sale. I can’t believe ukay-ukay stores have advertisements of that sort, but then again, this is the text era. My dad would reply with a simple “Thanks,” devoid of any excitement and anticipation. But in my mind, I see him smiling, looking round the store in search of an Armani. Or Ferragamo. Or Louis Vuitton. Or what-have-you’s.

An Epistle of Love

To my future,

Now that I write this, your identity is still unknown to me. I don’t even know if I have already met you. I am utterly clueless, although I sometimes wish you were already part of my circle. Regardless, I am hoping to be surprised when I finally meet you. I hope you also will be. You will be a pleasant surprise, a gift actually. A beautiful gift. An answer to my prayers. To my tearful cries. To my longings.

I have been waiting for you. For years. Quite abnormally long years. But I am patient. I have to be. I want you to find me spotless. Pure. Reserved. Yes, I have reserved myself for you. I won’t say, however, that I have been entirely faithful, although faithfulness while waiting is questionable because there is no one to be faithful to in the first place. But there is, I think. You. I have to be faithful to you. This is my choice. To wait for you.

It is not an effortless thing, I have to say. Because I’ve been tested several times and failed quite a few times, too. I battled with self-doubts, with self-pity, and every so often I questioned if you would ever come to find me. God says you will. And I trust Him with the intensity that I hope you have, too. Let’s trust God. Even though you are there and I am here, with our individual anonymity and the unknown future separating us, I know in my heart that God will cause us to meet someday. It will be a sweet thing, like finally locking the ends of a priceless necklace, keeping it secure, its diamond pendant radiating with the streaks of sunlight. I can’t help my excitement. But in the meantime, let’s wait.

Please be patient. I am being patient, though it requires too much of my strength. We will meet when God decides we are finally ready. I don’t want to go against God’s plan, and I know you feel the same way, too. Let’s obey. We will both be pleased if we allow God to work between us and unravel the love story He has already authored for you and me.

Right now, I know the Lord is still preparing us. For our meeting. For our union. And for every lovely thing He has for us. Indeed, it is the reason for this singleness. I often wonder why I have been in this season longer than many of my friends had. Do you often wonder, too? The only answer I have is because He wants us to be a testimony not only to our friends but also to other people, strangers even, who may have unfavorable opinion about love and marriage. The world needs models who can credibly demonstrate the rewards of waiting, and even if we didn’t plan to take that role, we were chosen. I want to be used you know, and if my, our, waiting is designed to create more impact and make our story more powerful, then I have no questions about it. In fact, it makes my heart glad. Because I also know that there will be a beautiful ending. A very beautiful ending to our singleness and an equally beautiful start to our togetherness.

I have to admit, though, that using us, we, and our is somewhat new to me. I have always been alone and I have never considered anyone to be part of myself. It has always been I, me, and my. So this is how it feels. It feels great. It feels as if you were here, next to me, watching me write you a letter, looking over my shoulders, peeking at every word that I put, holding my hand once in a while. But I can’t see your face. Until I see you personally, your face would always be a blank, hazy image. It’s okay. I have the rest of my lifetime to lock my gaze on that face God created with me in mind.

I have always loved you. I told that to a friend long ago, riding the train, with nothing to talk about. She probably didn’t see that coming and so doubted my feelings. She told me that this may not be the case, that I may not actually love you, that I loved only the idea of loving you or the idea of you. I pondered for a moment and thought that she may actually be right. No, I said. I love him. I love him even without knowing him. I love him even without knowing who he may actually be. I love him.

I didn’t convince her I know. Because if it weren’t me, if it were another person professing her affections for her unknown beloved, I would have scoffed at her. For who would believe in the idea of loving someone you haven’t met? Who would actually love an imaginary person? But to me, you are not imaginary. You are as real as anyone I know. Only you are not here. You are not with me. Yet. But that doesn’t give me any reason not to love you now.

Love is not just a feeling. Because if it is, I may have long ago abandoned the idea of us and have chosen to cling to someone else. But I did not. I chose to stay. Because love is a choice. If I didn’t love you, I would not have chosen to wait for you.

I believe it doesn’t require physical evidence to trigger love. I don’t need to see you to love you. It just happened. An occurrence even I can’t explain. And I don’t need to find reasons for feeling this way because I believe love demands no reason. You just love.

This is how I am toward you. And I will continue to wait for you until God says it’s time. You are part of neither my past nor my present, but you certainly will be part of my future, and to me, that’s better than enough. I will meet you. Soon. In God’s time. And we will be happy.

Lovingly,

Your future

The President of my childhood

Cory Aquino gained the seat of presidency in 1986. I was two years old. Naturally, I have no vivid recollection of what it was like to live under her regime. What little I know is wrung out of history books, sporadic TV documentaries, and my mother’s responses to my prodding questions. My mother said she was the fitting leader after the dictatorial regime, of which I have no recollection either. President Cory was like a nurse-mom, tending the large-scale injuries and patching band-aids to all sorts of national wound. There would still be momentary aches, invoked by protests from disgruntled people. But they were few. Opposition forces then were not as united and as widespread as they are today, said my mother.

I asked her why Cory. Why, of all people, a housewife, who was maintaining a low-profile status prior to the death of her husband, was chosen to run against an exceptionally intelligent, eloquent, and manipulative Marcos? She was, as I understood it, a faceless name. Certainly, the public saw something about this coy widow of a slain would-be president to become his replacement. But what was it? After a moment’s pause, my mother said that the Filipino people, with all the sentiments of an orphaned kid, looked for Ninoy in Cory. That they thought she was the closest thing to Ninoy.

On second thought, why shouldn’t it be Cory? She was perhaps the only person then who had no cravings for power and therefore had no desire to use the position for personal and a few beneficiaries’ interest. Indeed, history tells us that Cory’s integrity as president was almost spotless. Sure, her administration wasn’t remarkable; in fact, according to my mother, the economy had a downhill stride. But though the economy was weak, Cory did not aggravate the situation by overusing her power to fatten her pocket. Instead, she served with honesty, authenticity, genuine love for God and country, and overwhelming concern and affection for her people. She may not have made the Philippines an economic lion, but there was decency in her democratic leadership. And for a people cowered by a dictator for several long years, it mattered.

It was when she was already a private citizen that I began to take notice of her. I was older and more exposed to the matters of the government. I always remember Cory in yellow and taking part in activities to uphold the nation’s interest. Even though she had long ago relinquished her power, she remained visible and articulate when the democracy she had fought hard to rebuild was on the verge of erosion. In these instances, everyone needed to know what Cory had to say. Because she personified our aspirations and convictions as a people, she became the national conscience.

That’s why despite knowing how vile cancer is, I had hoped that Cory would live through 2010 elections. I thought that the coming elections would be some kind of a turning point, and I sort of expected her active involvement. If her condition, however, wouldn’t allow her to be active and visible as much as she once was, I thought that at least she deserved to witness the positive changes following the elections.

But then again, things happen. She passed away at 76. Orphaned for the second time, the entire Philippines is in deep mourning over the passing of Cory. I know so little about the Filipinos’ response to the death of other former presidents, so I have no point of comparison, but even then, I know that the people’s response to Cory’s death is special. When I saw the outpouring of love and gratitude first at her wake at La Salle Greenhills, then at Ayala Avenue, and during her funeral procession from Manila Cathedral to Manila Memorial Park, I knew it was the same spirit of 1983 and 1986, the same flood of emotions first felt when Ninoy died and then during EDSA 1. The same color. The same fervor. The same “L” (Laban) sign. The same patriotic songs. The same Cory chants. And perhaps the same faces, only some had grown old and some were added. Some say it was like a déjà vu. This time, however, they were not pursuing a fight. They were paying respects to the woman behind the bygone fight. And everyone was bound in love.

I know more about Cory when she passed away than when she was still alive. And that goes without saying I appreciate her more now. I guess, that’s the way it is with us humans. Death has a way of looming the greatness of a person and attracting us to the life he has lived. But Cory, even in death, seemed to have done another act of greatness. Lying lifeless, she reminded the Filipinos of People Power, of the fight for democracy, and of selfless love for country. She reminded us that we, as a people, are capable. This is nine months before elections. This is when threats to our democracy are coming at hand. I would say it’s a timely death, and Cory, even when laid to her final resting place, reawakened our spirit and stirred our memories at a time when we seem to have become forgetful, passive, and fatigued. This, I think, is her final contribution. And I hope her death, as did her life, would trigger changes in the way we see the country and how we protect it from external and internal enemies.

Journeying

Days before my birthday, I was telling myself to write something about the year that has been—my realizations, my accomplishments, my failures, my frustrations, and everything else that is expected to be pinned down during such life-turning occasion. I am usually not that sentimental, but I thought I need to get a hold of myself, try to look back, and draw learning that would help me live my life in the years ahead. Mulling over them was good, but putting them into writing was even better. However, I was good at ignoring the inner nudges. I wasn’t able to write anything days prior to my birthday, on my birthday itself, and few days after. It is only after a full month (071509) that I found myself writing.

Perhaps my avoidance of writing was partly because it had been a tough year. It was the year I caught the greatest blow of rejection and watched my long-time plans fall into pieces. Though I don’t call it cowardice, my avoidance had all the elements of it. The least I wanted was to be reminded, to see the memories flashing before me, to relive the pain. These same pain and frustrations caused me enormous and lingering confusion, the kind which would keep you restless until you find the source. I did find the source and it ushered me deep into my being, deeper than expected, and helped me see myself not just a blob on earth but as a person with a clear purpose. Though it was a tough year, it was also the year I knew more about who I am and what I was created for. And that alone is worth telling.

It didn’t happen abruptly. My self-discovery, I mean. It was a painful process and required me to be uprooted from where I was wrongly implanted. My perspectives had to be radically changed, my motives refined, my actions regrouped, and my plans restructured. Then one thing led to another. After a lot of seeking, questioning, self-doubting, and second-guessing, the dream was born anew and I seriously considered walking the path toward it.

The path, in fact, had been there all along, waiting for me, winking at me. I wasn’t just aware; I thought there was something else for me. It took some people, circumstances, and heartaches to validate it. And as if to dismiss the idea they were merely odd coincidences, more validations came and pointed me in that direction.

It isn’t the grandest of paths by the world standard. In fact, I am afraid I wouldn’t be as rich or as famed as I would have wanted. But this is where I am supposed to be. This is what I was created for. Unless I take this path and refuse the beckoning of the world and all its molds, I would forever feel restless, and joy, fulfillment, and blessings would always be elusive concepts. And I don’t want that.

Yes, I believe I have a predetermined path. My Maker thought of it as He was creating me. And these talents, these skills, this temperament, and everything that I am were purposely wired into my being in accordance to that path. That best explains why however hard I try to pull away and bring myself to the path of my own choosing, something pulls me back. He pulls me back.

I know the journey down that road is not without struggles. Every path, in the first place, has its own. But I won’t say I am not afraid. This is unchartered water and the fear of the unknown grips me. But the thought that I am trailing the path that is meant for me gives me confidence. And greater confidence comes by knowing that I am walking along with my Maker. This is not just human bravado, by the way. It emanates from indescribable peace, one you can get by sticking to your Creator’s original will for your life.

The year that has been was a bit challenging. I was put to a test—my faith and my character. But I wouldn’t seriously come to grips with myself had it not been for that season. I wouldn’t have known what I now know. It’s been a good year, after all.

“I will point out the road that you should follow. I will be your teacher and watch over you.”
Psalm 32:8 (CEV)

Beauty Contest

In 1994, the whole country was in such a fuss as it rolled the preparations for hosting the Miss Universe pageant. As a nine-year old, I couldn’t fully understand the hype that almost equaled the national elections two years prior. To me, the closest things to beautiful, model-ish girls were my Barbie dolls. I couldn’t care less if the girls trooping to the Philippines were the pre-selected muses representing many countries of the world from whom the girl to dominate the universe was said to emerge. Most girls—both big and small—dream of being the one.

Though I’ve never been a fan, I had voluntary fills of beauty contests. On the few occasions I watched one, it was either because my whole family was glued to a beauty contest on TV or I had to support friends in university-wide contests. Not that I was threatened finding girls with more beautifully structured facial features than mine (read: insecure), I just don’t get the whole thing. I mean, how could have they managed to decide—those who introduced the concept of beauty contest—that the women’s significance, integrity, intelligence, and beauty would be defined based on how well they parade their bodies in gowns and swimsuits, which have now shrunk to become bikinis, pose for photographers almost seductively, and engage the public in the ceremonial and, usually, superficial question-and-answer portion.

“What would be your legacy as a beauty queen?” the question would go.

“I’ll be an ambassadress of peace, unity, and good works,” she would say as if on cue.

“How do you plan to do that?”

“I’ll put up a charity, I’ll give to the poor, and I’ll be an actress.”

If not an actress, a singer, a host, or whatever profession that would allow us to see her in all kinds of medium on a regular basis. Though not all beauty titlists end up being instant celebrities, there are ample of them who enjoyed and still are enjoying their personal space on TV, magazines, and movies. Being a beauty queen, in the first place, puts them in a position where glamorous and lucrative job opportunities, which are usually not easily available to ordinary women, land right at their doorsteps. This makes joining beauty contests a means to an end.

I have a gay uncle who for a time breathed and lived beauty contests. He didn’t join one as far as I know. His participation was only limited to designing gowns, doing make-up, and scouting for possible contestants. Possible meaning any girl who fits into the usual standard of physical beauty. And my cousin was an easy fit. She has long, flawless legs; her straight, black hair is grown down to the waist; her skin is perfect; and she, in every way, is a beauty. The problem is, she is married. Had she been single, she would have joined since that was one of her plans several years’ back, but today is a different story. She has two young kids to look after and a husband whose name she has to protect. My uncle doesn’t take that as a problem, though, and insists she join a beauty contest for married women. My cousin, understandably, is as hard as a boulder to be pushed.

My version of the problem starts when my uncle shifts his attention to me. He would alternately say I should join one and that there’s a so and so beauty contest in so and so town. And the prize money would always be temptingly huge. I don’t know what kind of potential he sees in me to actually attempt “recruiting” me. I am not about as good-looking and tall and flawless as my cousin. In other words, I don’t fit the mold exclusively made for beauty queens. So it’s either my uncle has been looking for other girls but could find no one or he saw me as a diamond in the rough, only that I was never a diamond only full of rough. I once in while fake an interest partly to show him respect and partly to save myself from his cranky comments, but I still find a forgivable excuse to hint that beauty contests are not my type of thing.

“I am too short,” I once protested.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Others are only 5’4.”

“I am only 5’2.”

Silence.

My height shortage is clearly an easy pretext. But there are other reasons I wouldn’t ever consider participating in any beauty contest. First, I don’t wear swimsuits without shorts, and I think if I sashay that combination on stage, the organizers would forever hate me. Second, I am not comfortable telling people, half-shouting and half-robotic, my name, my city, my age, coupled with “Mabuhay!” Third, who said I could even get the nod of organizers and screening committee? “What can I do for you, miss? “I’d like to join the contest.” “Which contest?” “This beauty contest.” “What the! Guard, why did you let her in?!”

That I wouldn’t even get past the screening stage deflates my ego. But not for a long time because, and I think this is the most important reason, I know that no piece of crown or title can give a definitive measure to my value, intelligence, integrity, and beauty as a woman. And that I don’t have to compete with other ladies for some attention and applause to deserve good opportunities. I am honorable enough just being me, even without dominating the universe, the world, the earth, or my own city.

Playing grown-up

NOTE: This entry originally appeared in my Multiply site (eibibiway.multiply.com) and was published in Youngblood section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on April 25, 2009.

“I want to be a telephone operator,” said my sister when she was a kid. To be a telephone operator, which today could be roughly translated to a call center agent, was not yet the trend then, but my sister saw some sophistication in the job. She said it was the telephone operator’s voice that caught her so much that she wanted to be heard as well from the other end of the line. Thinking it was an odd pick, I was not so much in favor of the professional choice she had then—I thought to be a doctor or other more popular careers were better—but I was nevertheless glad she at least had an idea of what she would like to be.

In this respect, my sister and I were different. As a child, I never really had a clear picture of what I would become as an adult. So I thought if I joined any of the kiddie beauty contests on TV that were the craze then, I wouldn’t know how to respond if asked by Tito, Vic, or Joey the perennial question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In the culture that is ours, it was kind of expected that kids have a staple answer to that question, whether asked on TV or asked by a distant relative during a family reunion. It is sorely upsetting to hear from a child, “Um, I don’t know. Let me ask my mom,” or “Wait till I’m old enough to actually decide for myself,” or “What do you mean when I grow up?” I don’t know, but maybe adults either think that parents are responsible to feed into their kids what they ought to be, or kids, their youthful naivety notwithstanding, can clearly set out a plan for their lives that young.

To not feel a little left out, I tried a many times to respond with a truism like any child would. A doctor. A lawyer. A nurse. Or whatever job I knew by name then. I of course knew nothing about what it would require me to assume such jobs, but as long I had a steady answer, it was fine with me. But it didn’t take me that long to live in that truism, so for a time, I nearly convinced myself I really wanted to be a doctor. I am a little queasy over the sight of lesions, human insides, operations, and hospitals but it didn’t bother me at that time. I thought it was cool to give people the impression I wanted to be a doctor. That would make them think I was smart. Smart not entirely because I wanted to study for an average of ten long and painful years, but smart because I’d taken a time out to carefully weigh my options—which were abundant, by the way, since I was only a kindergarten and had no idea how to weigh options really—plan my future, and envision a good life for myself. Besides, isn’t it cute hearing from a five-year old she wanted to be a doctor? Then you would try to picture her clad in white, like what commercials do, with a stethoscope around her neck.

I watched a lot of TV before and after school when I was a kid. Like other regular kids, I had a fixation for cartoons, which populated the morning and afternoon airtime just so they could fit into the TV viewing schedule of schooling children. But unlike regular kids, I would get past the afternoon cartoons and continue my way to the primetime magazine shows and newscasts. I am sure I had slight understanding of what they were airing back then, for how could a gradeschooler fully understand economic inflation and deflation, political filibustering, horrendous carnages, cross-marriages in show business, and other stuff kids shouldn’t bother knowing? If there was one thing that kept me watching these shows, it’s my curiosity slash silent admiration of the TV industry then. Such was the influence of these TV shows on me that I thought this little exposure to the adult world changed every strand of naïve perspective I had as a kindergarten. Upon hitting my fifth grade, I automatically ditched the thought of becoming a doctor, a lawyer, and whatever job that came afterwards and I officially and quite deliberately managed to define what I wanted to be when I grow up: I wanted to be part of that TV industry, and not just any part—I wanted to be on TV.

I inched my way towards my career goal, even despite my mother, a teacher, wanting me to take Education. She said that teachers have the most stable job of all and that it would be nice if we become teachers like her. She didn’t put any force in convincing us though, and in all fairness to her, it was more like I’m-just-giving-you-an-option-and-maybe-you-would-want-to-give-it-a-thought kind of thing. It was a gentle coax, something like a mom would do when asking her child to scrub her back for her. I did appreciate her show of concern for my future, but being the idealistic ilk that was me, I instinctively took the course I wanted and sealed my plan as if I was certain the way ahead of me was not as jagged and as rough as it was in reality.

What I failed to realize is that it was more than jagged and rough, it was utterly confusing. Four years in college and a lot more years prior to that, I was sure I wanted to be on TV. A year after college, just when I was working for TV, I realized it wasn’t for me. I guess it’s the usual case of discovering more about the thing you like when you already have it than when you were just eyeing for it. Sometimes you like it because it looks good, but if it doesn’t feel good, things start to get sour. Had I known better, I could have asked my mother to decide for me, so I would be saved from the trouble of being at the receiving end of her reprimand about my career decisions. But on thinking that she could have talked me into taking Education, which I have a little interest in either, I feel a certain relief I didn’t allow her to take control of my career choices. Maybe the only thing that I’m sorry about is not taking the wrong course, but figuring out what I really want to be just a little late.

A few months from now, my niece is going to college. She has been thinking since last year what she would take up. She has a few choices, but she hasn’t really decided which would take her to the top of the employment trend. She is 17 years old, and I say so much young to decide for her future. But when I was in her shoes several years ago, at age 16, I felt I was old and wise enough to know what I wanted. Had I realized early on I was hardly capable of making such an important decision, I could have taken a reroute. But that is how it is in this part of the earth: 16, 17 year-old kids—and I mean kids in its truest sense—who might have known how to solve an algebraic equation but not what exactly lies ahead in the real world, get to decide on something that would supposedly contour their future. Good, if they manage to stick to their decisions until retirement age. Bad, if until retirement age they brokenheartedly stick to what they’ve decided for practical reasons. Good, if, upon realizing what they want a bit late, they bravely take a rebound. Bad, if they don’t recognize an opportunity for a rebound at all.

For a time, I had a deceiving conception about education. I unconsciously thought that my career options were limited only to the jobs that categorically correspond to my degree. This sent me to a sudden confusion, which I later recognized as typical to early and mid-20’s who are compelled to practice what they earned in school. What I realized is that it’s not about the degree, but how I manipulate and put to good use whatever innate skills I have. I know a few people who take on a career, a flourishing one mind you, far from their degrees: an Advertising graduate turned teacher, an Economics graduate turned creative director, and so on. I know you know a lot of their kind, or maybe you’re one of them. These stories are kind of odd, aren’t they? But even so they do prove to me that theories learned in school are soon forgotten; the innate skills, on the other hand, could ferry you to where you are supposed to be if consistently honed. A degree, at least in some cases, seldom does.

In my pressing times, I’d like to put the blame exclusively on myself, but then I would immediately withdraw, thinking there’s no point in blaming myself, or anyone or anything for that matter. I am glad I took my course. Were it not for it, I wouldn’t have met my friends, wouldn’t have recognized my skills, and wouldn’t have learned the ropes of thinking, analyzing, and problem-solving, which are glaringly necessary in coursing through any career. Education has done me good, although it did not help me establish a career I’ve initially and blindly seared into my brain. It’s okay. What’s important is that even though I’ve begun my career with unimpressive decisions, it’s not too late for me to start anew.